habit, in favour
of any particular form or system of government, those prejudices have
yet to stand the test of reason and reflection. In fact, such prejudices
are nothing. No man is prejudiced in favour of a thing, knowing it to be
wrong. He is attached to it on the belief of its being right; and
when he sees it is not so, the prejudice will be gone. We have but a
defective idea of what prejudice is. It might be said, that until men
think for themselves the whole is prejudice, and not opinion; for that
only is opinion which is the result of reason and reflection. I offer
this remark, that Mr. Burke may not confide too much in what have been
the customary prejudices of the country.

I do not believe that the people of England have ever been fairly and
candidly dealt by. They have been imposed upon by parties, and by men
assuming the character of leaders. It is time that the nation should
rise above those trifles. It is time to dismiss that inattention which
has so long been the encouraging cause of stretching taxation to excess.
It is time to dismiss all those songs and toasts which are calculated to
enslave, and operate to suffocate reflection. On all such subjects men
have but to think, and they will neither act wrong nor be misled. To
say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their
choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not. If
such a case could be proved, it would equally prove that those who
govern are not fit to govern them, for they are a part of the same
national mass.

But admitting governments to be changed all over Europe; it certainly
may be done without convulsion or revenge. It is not worth making
changes or revolutions, unless it be for some great national benefit:
and when this shall appear to a nation, the danger will be, as in
America and France, to those who oppose; and with this reflection I
close my Preface.

THOMAS PAINE

London, Feb. 9, 1792

RIGHTS OF MAN PART II.

INTRODUCTION.

What Archimedes said of the mechanical powers, may be applied to Reason
and Liberty. "Had we," said he, "a place to stand upon, we might raise
the world."

The revolution of America presented in politics what was only theory in
mechanics. So deeply rooted were all the governments of the old
world, and so effectually had the tyranny and the antiquity of habit
established itself over the mind, that no beginning could be made in
Asia, Af